Fun making accordion books

Accordion books look like the name sounds.  The pages are made from a single long strip of paper that is folded in a zig-zag.  The folded panels represent one signature.  The ends of the paper strip are glued to the front and back covers of the book.  The covers are wrapped in beautiful decorative papers.  These fun books can be made use different foldings, bindings, closures and sizes of paper.

We started with a long strip of 3.5" wide paper that we carefully folded into eight even panels.  The boards were cut larger then the dimensions of the text block, providing a 1/8" square.  We used beautiful hand printed decorative papers Hollis had brought to cover of the boards.  The decorative paper was cut larger then the board's dimensions so it could be wrapped around to the inside.  

I glued the end of a length of ribbon to the inside front cover before the end pages of text block were glued to the inside of the covers.  I used a Pentel Sunburst Metallic gel pen to added some corner embellishments to the front and back pages.  Then cut a few of the small spirals from a scrap of the decorative paper and glued them to the corners of the pages.

Excess glue is carefully wiped up with a moist paper towel, and wax paper was inserted between the pages to keep any missed glue from sticking them together.  Then the assembled book was carefully placed under a board with a brick on top to flatten the cover and pages while they dried.  At the end of the day we had a table of brick covered books.  

The next day our book were ready for us to add final touches.  I needed a button for the ribbon closure, but it took me a few days to find the right one.  I found the perfect button at the  John C. Campbell Folk School store.  The handmade raku button was impressed with a spiral design similar to the decorative paper used for the cover.  Since the button had two holes I was able to sew it on leaving a space for the ribbon to pass under the button between the threads.